The election is decided. The event is over. The Rudd Revolution will
hit the ground running, we hear. “For all Australians”, he tells us.
Will it be a change of substance to bring equal rights and social
justice? Or is it just a 'cupcake revolution'?

Hi Margo, now that Maxine has claimed Bennelong, I can pay my tribute
to her. Wayne Swan said on the election night that when Maxine decided
to challenge Howard, it lifted and energised the whole Party. How true,
how true, it certainly energised me.

Hello. Queensland swung hardest. My State. A long time ago I lived in Dawson, next door to the National Party MP, Mr Ray Braithwaite. I rode my horse on journeys with Ray's son. It's gone Labor. Queenslanders believe in a fair go. Yep, my much maligned state said no to Howard, and yes to something fairer.

The question resolves down to this: can Labor peel off one or two
Liberal or National Senators to vote with them on each significant
issue? That nice Mr Joyce is an obvious candidate, at least on
WorkChoices, and on each issue there are others who can be identified
as having sympathetic views.

As you see, tomorrow will bring me that smile that I have been keeping since that night. Because the timing is right now for the old cycle to be broken and ended as our country has learned much. And a song for you.

Rejoice in performing your democratic duty. Rejoice in people from all
sides gathering at polling booths and treating each other with great
civility. Rejoice in a system that works, a system that we can be proud
of.

Time for some personal predictions from Webdiarists. What's the majority going to be, for which side, plus any predictions for specific seats? To someone like me who lived through the 1997 UK campaign, this has all the feel of that, including the mixed polls in the last few days, so I'll go with the Newspoll state-by-state 100 Labor, 48 Coalition, 2 other. Over to you

The whole thing is a storm in a teacup. Nobody is suggesting that any of these candidates would be ineligible on election day, or on the day they took up their seats if they should win. This is what the constitutional provision is trying to prevent, and it has succeeded. The actual argument is about minutiae.

The main reason for the rise of democracy and social-welfare with its old age pensions, public hospitals, public housing, and universal education after the Great Depression of the 1930s was that the beneficiaries of the robber-baron culture which had dominated until then were aware that if people were kept sufficiently miserable, they would turn to communism and socialism. (Naomi Klein)

"if you look at the
specifics of say the Haneef case, the truth is I don't think any us on our side
of politics know precisely what's gone on there. Other than something smells.
And that's why I'm dead serious, whether we win the election or whether we
don’t, that there should be a full judicial inquiry into that matter so we can
get to the bottom of what went wrong. It's quite important because that then
informs the future debate about the nature of our laws, the implementation of
our laws by the relevant agencies, and let's have all those facts on the table.
They are not currently on the table. And that's the problem." Kevin Rudd

Let me translate for you the psychological message that the Liberals
have been spreading to save a marginal seat. "Be afraid of the
Muslims. They support terrorism. Labor supports the Muslim supporters
of terrorism. To protect yourself, vote Liberal"

The same opinion polls which predict that John Howard will lose the election on 24 November also consistently show that Australians still perceive his Government to be competent at handling Australia's defence, or at least more capable than the Labor Opposition. How valid is that perception?

Both scientific method and the law teach one to be skeptical and base one’s conclusions on evidence. Steeped in both, I remain a climate change skeptic in the sense that, save for the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer, I can see no convincing evidence for human induced effects on the climate. By the same token, I remain agnostic on the issue: if there is evidence, I should like to see it.

"This is not a Tasmania I any longer recognise, this is Bjelke Petersens Queensland, and it is time we took our Tasmania back—back from the lies, from the intimidation, from the threats, from the character assassinations and blacklisting. Because its our Tasmania, not one company’s fiefdom. We have suffered for too many years them turning Tasmanian against Tasmanian, seeking to make us forget that what joins us is always greater than what divides us, that forest worker and conservationist, union man and greenie woman, southerner and northerner, Liberal and Labor and Green all share a great love for our island and for our people." Richard Flanagan, author

The Australian Press Council, which regulates media in Australia,
condemned the original article as 'irresponsible journalism'. But
the Murdoch journalist who wrote the article showed it went much
further than that when he admitted to the Council that the source of
the propaganda had been the Liberal Party itself! His newspaper had
enabled the Liberals to 'launder' their own libellous concoctions and
to disguise their source. As dirty tricks go, this has got to be one of
the most cunning.

Simply put both major political parties are years behind where the technology already is. Their ‘policies’ are already obsolete.If the plant being built in California was duplicated here it would move the debate on renewable energy sources forward by ten years and it would set the benchmark by which all future electricitygeneration projects would be measured, and render the argument over nuclear power plants irrelevant.

What Latham fails to point out is that if the Australian people fail on 24 November to take advantage of the opportunity before them to throw from office the worst Government by far that this country has had since federation, then a very dangerous precedent will have been set. In covering up this basic reality, Latham is, himself, undermining the very democracy he claims he wants to see rejuvenated.

What can be more condescending than the demand that someone reveal his
or her judgment in thirty seconds or less? To appear before TV viewers
as 'typical' (and therefore average and not too exceptional!). What
greater insult than to imply that reporters can reduce the public
psyche to a set of questions and answers in which the assumption is
already made that the TV presenter is the clever one!

"The US and its allies, including Australia have a pre-determined, undeclared and primary motive: to make Afghanistan safe for United States’ oil interests." Colin Miller. In his debut piece for Webdiary, Colin analyses the evidence that supports this claim.

"People have written short fiction stories about how the future might be in a dramatically altered world. Perhaps I should write one for Webdiary? What do you think? Could it stand a bit of fiction?" - Ian McPherson. Now read on...

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